Learning a new computer system or application is never an easy task, especially for novice computer users. Experienced computer users tend to know how to navigate application help wizards and other help resources when trying to figure out how to solve a problem. However, less experienced users tend to try and solve new problems with old methods that they are comfortable with (i.e., they try to use a nail when a screw would solve the problem more efficiently and effectively).
Manual learning management systems provide users with a plan to schedule training, track course progress, and provide feedback after the course and other training activities. While learning management systems allow people to periodically update their course requests and the like (manually), current systems are based on a user, or their supervisor, reading over a list of courses and making a determination as to the most appropriate course or set of courses that will help the user learn the necessary skills to tackle a problem.
Some automated application help mechanisms exist, however, those solutions are limited to a single application (i.e., the help wizard is application specific). Each application has a different and dedicated help wizard. While this solution may be useful for a user trying to learn one specific application, it is rarely helpful for a user trying to become more efficient across multiple applications and possibly utilizing multiple media types (e.g., a new contact center agent in a contact center setting typically needs to learn multiple applications to handle different media types). Additionally, since help wizards are used for specific applications and do not share information (or learned things about the user's behavior) beyond the application currently being used, existing help wizards are limited. For example, a help wizard in a word processing application can display help suggestions for creating basic tables that contain summarized data, but if the user is trying to utilize the word processing application to create a more extensive table, the help wizard in the word processing application will likely be of little to no value. More specifically, the word processing help wizard is not aware of other applications that could be used more effectively to create a more extensive table and if the user is unaware of that other application, then the likelihood of that user learning about the other application and how to use it is greatly reduced.